Among Thieves

by David Hosp

  “Thanks, Finn. I’ll pay you back.”

  “Goddamned right you will,” Finn said. “I’ll have you posted in ten minutes. It’ll take another hour to process you out, but I’ll meet you out front.”

  “Okay,” Devon said.

  Then he was gone, and Finn was standing alone in a room full of people. The hearing had been the easy part, he knew. From here on, it was going to get a lot harder.

  The man who had abducted Sally repeated the same ritual over and over. Every few hours he would come down the stairs to give her a sip of water and a bite to eat. There was no kindness; he showed no more feeling toward her than he might toward a plant he was watering. If anything, the longer she was there, the less humanity he seemed to have.

  Sally had changed, too. She was now at the point where she might have preferred dehydration to the periodic maintenance. At first, her situation had seemed unreal. That changed when the man brought the body downstairs.

  She’d seen that there was someone else in the house when he hurried her through toward the basement, but the man with the dark hair had pushed her downstairs too quickly for her to get a good look at the other man. Now she’d had more of a look than she’d ever wanted, and she knew that if she lived through the ordeal, the man’s face would haunt every minute of sleep she might manage to have.

  She couldn’t tell what was happening when she heard her captor open the door the night before, grunting his exertion. She could hear him dragging something down the stairs, and it sounded as if the planks would snap as the weight slammed down, step by step. She knew it was a dead body by the time it reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Now he lay there, not more than ten feet from her. The man with the black hair hadn’t even bothered to turn the body over on its stomach or close the eyes; he lay on his side, frozen in death, staring at her. The tongue dangled from the lips, dark and synthetic, like a rubber toy hanging stiff and thick. She could see a deep wound on the chest, and the slice through the neck caused the head to tilt back, revealing what looked like a huge second mouth.

  It was starting to smell.

  The body chased away any doubt of the danger she was in. She understood fully now that if she was to survive this, it was going to take all of her focus and concentration. She thought briefly about giving up; hoping for death. She’d led a life thick with disappointment and despair, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable for her to call it quits now. After all, hadn’t she suffered enough?

  The thought was fleeting, though. If anything, the reminder of what death was—brutal, and lonely, and final—sharpened her desire for life. As she lay there, plastered to the cold, unforgiving cellar floor, she made a vow to herself that she would never again let anyone determine the course of her life. She was done with grown-ups; done with parents; done with relying on others. From now on, she would rely only on herself. That thought gave her hope for the future. That thought strengthened her will to live.

  Finn went straight to the clerk’s office at the courthouse once the bail hearing was over. As he walked, he placed a call on his cell phone to a bail bondsman and confirmed the amount needed to secure Devon’s release. The bondsman was one with whom Finn dealt regularly—a colorful character named Shifty LaRue, whose interests extended to nightclubs and parking lots—and he sent over a messenger with all the forms needed. Finn paid the messenger with a check written on the firm’s account, and within a half hour Devon was brought down in street clothes. He was sweating despite the fact that it was in the fifties outside and there was a chill in the courthouse.

  “What now?” Devon asked.

  “First, we need to deal with finances,” Finn said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean, Devon,” Finn said. “I just laid out five thousand dollars to get you free. That’s on top of nearly twenty thousand we’ve got sunk into this case in fees so far. Plus, it’s going to get more expensive as the case proceeds.”

  “Jesus, you’re fuckin’ kidding, right?” Devon said. “My daughter’s been kidnapped; we’ve got to get her back.”

  “And we will. I’ve been on the outside, and my people and I have been dealing with this shit for a week—shit that you knew about and didn’t share with us. For Christ’s sake, Devon, you put me and my people in harm’s way. My associate ended up in the hospital because of you, and this psychopath almost fucked up her pregnancy.”

  “I thought you didn’t care about the money. That’s what you said.”

  “That was before. I changed my mind; now I want to get paid.”

  “I told you, you’re gonna get paid,” Devon said. “But first we get Sally back.”

  Finn shook his head. “Bullshit. We get paid now, or you’re on your own. Period. That’s not negotiable, Devon. Hell, I don’t know where you’re gonna be tomorrow. I’m not gonna get stiffed. You say you can pay? Prove it.”

  Devon put his hands in his pockets and looked away. “Fine,” he said. “You want your fuckin’ money, I’ll get you your fuckin’ money.”

  “Good.”

  “But then you’re in this. To the end.”

  “As long as we get paid, we’re in this to the end,” Finn agreed.

  Devon hesitated a moment. Then he said, “We gotta go to my apartment.”

  Finn put his hand out toward the courthouse exit. “You lead the way,” he said.

  Kozlowski was waiting for them outside. He’d spent the morning and the first part of the afternoon getting Lissa released from the hospital and set up in her apartment.

  “How’s she doing?” Finn asked.

  “She’ll be okay,” Kozlowski replied. “I told her to keep the door locked and not let anyone in unless it was you or me. I also told her to keep the phone in her hand and 911 on speed dial.”

  “Kilbranish isn’t going after her,” Finn said. “He wants Devon.” He looked at his client and saw the man shiver.

  “Where to?” Kozlowski asked.

  “Devon’s apartment,” Finn replied. “We’re gonna get paid. Then we can deal with getting Sally back.”

  Kozlowski nodded. “My car’s in the lot around the corner,” he said.

  “You don’t think the three of us can fit in the MG?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Right.”

  Finn left his car parked, and the three of them headed to the public lot on State Street where Kozlowski had left his car. It was a giant gas-guzzling Chevy Caprice that was at least ten years old. It had enough room in it for a tennis match, though, and even Finn had to admit it was better suited to their needs that day.

  No one spoke on the ride to Devon’s apartment. Finn hadn’t been there since the day he’d picked up Sally. It was hard to believe that was only four days ago. Since then, it seemed as though his entire world had changed, and not for the better.

  Kozlowski parked his car in front of the apartment, and they all climbed out. The apartment hadn’t changed. It was still a rathole. Maybe he could take some solace in the fact that the rest of the world went on unaware of the chaos going on all around it. Maybe that provided the only semblance of stability there was in the universe.

  Devon pulled out his keys and opened the door. As soon as they stepped in, they all smelled it. It was impossible to miss—the unmistakable stench of rot and decay. “Holy shit, I think I’m gonna throw up,” Devon said.

  Kozlowski pulled his gun out. “I’ll go first,” he said quietly.

  “Okay,” Finn replied. He hung back as Kozlowski moved into the apartment. There wasn’t much to search. There was a living room in front; in the 1920s, when the place had been built, it had probably been called a parlor. There was nothing amiss there, though. At the back of the living room there was a door and a hallway.

  “Where do those lead?” Kozlowski asked Devon.

  “The door goes to the kitchen,” he said. “The hallway goes to the bedrooms and a bathroom.”

  “How many bedrooms?”

  “Two.”

>   “Anything else back there?”

  “A closet, but that’s it.”

  Kozlowski held his gun at the ready, with two hands, pointed at the ceiling. He moved across the living room to the hallway. For such a large man, it was amazing the way he could travel without any sound, Finn thought. “Stay here,” he said.

  Finn looked at Devon. “We’ll stay here,” he said.

  Kozlowski disappeared down the hallway. It seemed as if he was gone for a long time, though it was probably only a minute or so. He came back out and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. He motioned toward the kitchen door and gave a signal for Finn and Devon to remain where they were. He slid along the wall, his gun still at the ready. Then he swung around the corner, pointing the pistol in front of him as he went, and disappeared through the door. A moment later he yelled, “Found it!”

  Finn glanced at Devon and then the two of them moved toward the kitchen. The stench intensified as they approached the door, until it grew overpowering. Then they stepped into the room.

  The kitchen was small, little more than a galley, and Kozlowski was standing in the middle of it, making it difficult to see. Moving to the side, though, Finn could see what was causing the stench.

  The refrigerator door was standing open, and there was food on the counter. Flies buzzed around a smorgasbord of hamburger meat and ham that had been left out.

  “That fuckin’ bitch,” Devon said. He moved around Kozlowski to get a better look. “Fuckin’ Shelly. She did this on purpose.”

  “Probably,” Finn said.

  Kozlowski opened a window. “It can be cleaned.”

  “I know, but still,” Devon said.

  “You left her with your mess for a couple of days,” Finn pointed out. “She probably figured turnabout was fair play.”

  “Fuck,” Devon said.

  “You’ve got bigger problems than this,” Kozlowski pointed out. That brought them all back to reality.

  “The money,” Finn said to Devon.

  Devon pulled some paper towels off a roll on the counter and swept some of the mess into a nearby garbage can. “This is fucked up,” he said, holding his head away from the smell.

  “I’m serious, Devon,” Finn said. “We don’t get paid, and we don’t move on from here.”

  Devon threw the paper towel into the garbage can. “You’re a bloodless shit,” he said. “You wait here. I’ll be right back. It’s in back.”

  Finn shook his head. “Do we look stupid?”

  “I swear to God, it’s in back,” Devon said. “I just don’t want you to see where.”

  “That’s too bad,” Finn said. Devon hesitated. “All we want is what you owe us, but we’re not letting you out of our sight until this is settled. I don’t give a shit whether you trust us or not. If you want to get your daughter back, we’re doing this right now.”

  “Fine,” Devon said at last. “Knock yourself out.” He walked out of the kitchen and around into the hallway. As Finn and Kozlowski followed, Finn took a good look at the place for the first time. As bad as it looked from the outside, it got worse the deeper into the apartment he traveled. The living room was tiny, and the furniture was fraying and stained. The back hallway had been carpeted sometime in the 1950s, from the look of it, and there were places where it had worn through entirely. Everywhere the walls were stained and shedding paint. Finn shuddered to think of Sally living there.

  Devon walked halfway down the hallway and then turned into the bathroom. Finn and Kozlowski would have followed him in, but there wasn’t enough space for two grown men inside. They kept an eye on him from the hallway.

  Devon stood on the edge of the tub and reached up to what looked like a vent in the ceiling. He pushed the vent cover up gently, then slid it to the side. Reaching into the opening in the ceiling, he withdrew a sack. He held the sack in front of his body, away from Finn and Kozlowski so that they couldn’t see. After a moment, he reached up again and replaced the sack, then slid the vent cover back into place.

  He stepped down off the tub and walked back out into the hallway. Holding out his hands, he said, “There’s thirty-five thousand there.” Finn looked at the stack of cash. It was tightly packed, wrapped in orange bands denoting five-thousand-dollar bundles. There were seven bundles. “That’s five thousand for the bond, twenty thousand for the work you’ve done so far, and another ten to cover the next bit. That gets you all in,” Devon said.

  Finn slapped the money out of his hands. The bundles fell to the floor, and Devon reached for them instinctively. “What the fuck!” he yelled.

  “You stupid, lying motherfucker,” Finn said.

  “What? Count it, it’s real!”

  “I don’t give a shit about the money, you stupid asshole.” Finn reached out and grabbed Devon by the shirt and threw him up against the hallway wall.

  “What do you mean?” Devon’s voice was cracking, and he looked confused as he tried to wrestle away. Finn held his neck, though. “What the fuck are we here for?”

  “Where are the paintings, Devon?”

  Devon’s confusion morphed to panic. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  Still holding on to Devon’s neck, Finn leaned back and punched his client in the face. Devon crumpled to the floor. “Don’t give me that shit, Devon. We know.”

  Devon jackknifed on the hallway floor in front of Finn, his hands covering his head. “Know what?” he choked out. “I don’t understand!”

  “Cut the shit, Devon, or I’ll turn this over to Koz here. He was a cop for twenty-five years; you don’t think he’s got some experience getting people like you to talk?” He knelt down, putting his face right up next to Devon’s. “We know you were the one who offered to sell the paintings. You gave potential buyers photographs and paint chips to prove the offer was real. That means you know where they are. Now you’re going to tell us.”

  “Fuck you!” Devon yelled. “You don’t know shit!”

  “I know that you live in a shithole roaches wouldn’t set foot in for all the fuckin’ mess. I know you haven’t been doing any steady work for Murphy or Ballick or anyone else for years. I know that you just reached into your ceiling and pulled out thirty-five thousand dollars without batting an eye, and if you’d had that kind of money for any amount of time, you wouldn’t be living here. And I know that the IRA paid someone one hundred thousand dollars for confirmation on the paintings. It doesn’t take a fuckin’ rocket scientist to put all this together, Devon. Are you really this stupid?”

  Devon was still lying on the floor. It seemed as though the physical pain had subsided, but he looked utterly defeated.

  “I also know that this Kilbranish out there has got your daughter, and he’s going to kill her if he doesn’t get these paintings. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “It means everything to me!” Devon yelled. “It’s the only goddamned thing I care about. I’m giving myself up. I’ll trade myself for her, and I’ll take the pain! Even death!”

  Finn shook his head in confusion. “But don’t you understand? You don’t have to. He doesn’t want you, he wants the paintings. If we give those to him, he’s not gonna give a shit about you anymore.”

  “Fuck you,” Devon said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Finn looked at Kozlowski. He was staring at Devon, his eyes narrowed. It was clear that he had no better insight than Finn about what was going on.

  “Where are the paintings, Devon?” Finn asked again at last.

  Devon looked up at him. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The last time Devon saw Whitey Bulger was in December of 1994. It was a dangerous time in Southie; a dangerous time for everyone with connections. The tension in the projects and down along the water crackled as the crisp New England winter set in. There had been a crackdown in recent months on bookmakers across Boston, and people—connected people—had been slipping out of sight. There were whispers
everywhere that something was coming. No one knew what or when or how, but that didn’t stop people from believing. They talked about it as if it were an impending apocalypse; a nameless threat hovered everywhere, making everyone jumpy. There’s nothing more dangerous than a community of nervous gangsters.

  Devon was at home in his apartment three days before Christmas. Despite the success at the Gardner Museum years earlier, the promise of advancement and opportunity had never materialized. It was as if the whole thing had never happened. The fallout from the robbery in the law-enforcement community was so heavy that the Gardner job wasn’t something he could use; if anything the attention paid to the investigation made him radioactive. Those who knew of his involvement had stayed away from him for years. Worse, he had spent the entire time looking over his shoulder, sure that he would be eliminated at any moment by Bulger or one of his men, just to clean up the loose ends.

  When the phone rang and he heard Bulger’s voice on the other end of the line, his heart stopped. “I got a job for you,” Bulger said.

  “Okay,” Devon said, the perspiration spreading over his body like the winter fog. “What is it?”

  “Not over the phone,” Bulger said. “Tonight. Meet me at the liquor store. One o’clock.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Bulger,” Devon said.

  When he hung up the phone, Devon’s first instinct was to run. He went to his bedroom and opened his drawers, wondering what he would need to take. After a moment, though, his knees gave out and he slumped to the bed. The truth was that nothing he could take would make a difference. A change of clothes and fifty bucks; that was the sum total of his existence. The only thing that kept him alive was the odd job Murphy threw him occasionally. If he left, he’d have nothing. Less than nothing, even.

  As he sat there, he thought hard about his situation. If Whitey had wanted him dead, he’d have had it done before now, he figured. It was a rationalization, but he had nothing else. He even convinced himself that maybe this was the start of good things for him—the fulfillment of a promise made years before.